People in H&S: Kenneth W. Stringer;

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JL his is a fight for maintaining the
quality of accounting standards, not
for the survival of the accounting pro­fession."
Summing up recent developments
culminating in the proposals by the
staff of the Senate (Metcalf) Subcom­mittee
on Reports, Accounting and
Management that the government
take over the setting of accounting
standards and require other sweeping
changes affecting the practice of ac­counting
firms, Ken Stringer, Exec­utive
Office partner in charge of
Accounting and Auditing Services,
admits to optimism. "I think the next
twelve to eighteen months will be a
critical period for the accounting pro­fession.
But I don't think any changes
we may see in that period will be so
drastic that the future of the profession
will be impaired."
The very fact that the profession has
been more in the public eye in recent
years underlines a growing recognition
of its key role in the country's eco­nomic
structure, he contends. "Per­haps
even more pertinent is the fact
that most of the proposals that have
been made are concerned with how to
make the profession more effective,
not with how to supplant it," Ken
said. "No matter who sets the
standards, the fact remains that it is
the accountant who has to implement
those standards. I suppose in the long
run the question of just who will set
accounting standards — be it the
Financial Accounting Standards
Board or the government — is more
crucial for American business than for
CPAs."
Kenneth W. Stringer is a man as
comfortable in the world of the politi­cal
realities of accounting's role in the
economy as he is in the conceptual
areas of accounting and the applica­tion
of advanced mathematical tech­niques
to accounting and auditing
problems.
Born in Birmingham, Kentucky,
Ken received a BS degree from West­ern
Kentucky University in 1938 be­fore
joining the accounting staff of the
Kentucky Public Service Commission.
He served with the commission for
about two years, working on rate regu­lation
affairs. In 1939 Haskins & Sells
opened an office in Louisville, Ken­tucky,
and Ken joined the staff there
soon after.
"I found myself thinking more and
more of the challenges offered to a
CPA in public accounting, of the
career possibilities offered by a na­tional
firm," he recalls.
While working in the Louisville of­fice,
Ken met Catherine Gatten, who
was in training to become a registered
nurse at a hospital in Murray, Ken­tucky,
where Ken's mother had been
hospitalized following an auto acci­dent.
Ken and Catherine married two
years later.
"The medical genes seem predomi­nant
in our family," Ken said. Cath­erine
has three sisters, all of whom are
nurses, while Kenneth Robert
Stringer, Ken and Catherine's elder
son, is practicing as a specialist in
internal medicine and younger son
Warren has just completed his first
year at medical school.
With the outbreak of World War II,
the U.S. Army Ordnance Department
issued a call for accountants, who were
badly needed for procurement work.
Ken resigned from the Louisville office
and spent two years as a civilian em­ployee
of the Ordnance Department
before entering military service. After
basic training in Indianapolis, he
served an additional two years in uni­form
with the Ordnance Department
in Cincinnati.
Following his discharge from the
military, Ken went into private prac­tice
in Danville, Kentucky. "The six
years I spent in private practice gave
me good insight into small business
and tax work," he said. "I really en­joyed
having my own practice— it was
interesting and challenging. There was
immense satisfaction in watching the
practice grow."
Every professional has to set his own
horizons, his own goals, and for Ken
the inherent restrictions of a small­town
practice eventually outweighed
the satisfactions of a private practice.
As the work became increasingly re­petitive,
the professional challenge
dwindled. Ken found it difficult to re­cruit
a first-rate staff in a city the size
of Danville. He chafed at the lack of
opportunity to grow professionally.
These factors triggered his decision
in 1952 to rejoin Haskins & Sells in
Cincinnati, where he served for five
years before transferring to Executive
Office.
Ken came to EO in 1957 to work on
special assignments with Weldon Pow­ell,
who was then the senior technical
partner in the Firm. "Executive Office
was not quite as departmentalized then
as it is today," he said, "and, in addi­tion
to Weldon, I worked closely with
partners Oscar Gellein, Emmett Har­rington
and Everett Shifflett."
Ken was admitted to the Firm in
1959, appointed partner in charge of
Accounting and Auditing Services in
1973, and named to the Policy Com­mittee
the following year. In his pres­ent
position as the senior technical